All of that, plus fuel, means the spacecraft tips the scales at approximately 13,000 lbs., which requires a bruiser of a rocket to muscle it off the ground. Europa Clipper will get that rocket, in the form of the 27-engine SpaceX Falcon Heavy, with over 5 million lbs. of thrust, able to launch more than 37,000 lbs. on an interplanetary trajectory.

NASA is poised to launch Europa Clipper, a $5.2 billion mission to Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, as early as October 10. The spacecraft will blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. It will study Europa, a possible home for extraterrestrial life, through a series of flybys after reaching Jupiter in 2030.

NASA is preparing to launch one of its most ambitious space missions to date: the Europa Clipper. Set to travel nearly 1.8 billion miles from Earth, the spacecraft will explore Europa, an icy moon orbiting Jupiter,

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission is scheduled for launch on October 10, 2024, from Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The mission aims to explore Europa, one of Jupiter’s icy moons,

Nasa is doing just that: launching a spacecraft on October 10 to Europa, a moon of Jupiter holding twice the water of all Earth’s oceans combined. Europa’s ocean is between 60 and 150 kilometres deep and is hidden beneath an outer shell of ice that’s 15 to 25 kilometres thick.